Identifying bureaucratic capitalism as a subset or "type" of state capitalism, Au's thesis rejects the market socialist claims of such thinkers as Giovanni Arrighi. Au holds that state ownership in itself does not function as a kind of socialized property; on the contrary, state ownership allows for the bureaucracy to directly control the appropriation of surplus value....

The distinction of this kind of capitalism from state or "authoritarian" capitalism is in "the degree of the partys privatization of the state, the extent of bourgeoisification of the bureaucracy, and the fact that it is this bureaucracy which constitutes the core of the bourgeoisie."